The Madness of Love
by Kaen Okami
Summary: Serving as the weapon of Asura had been the only purpose in life that Vajra had ever known, and one he assumed would never change. Loving him, too, had seemed as if it would last forever. Now, after Asura has betrayed him and fallen irretrievably into madness, Vajra must break the ties that bound him to his partner and search for a new reason to exist. Twoshot.


" _Why have you waited to embrace me, my dear?_

 _Cold is your silence, denying what is real_

 _I'm still wondering why I'm still calling your name, my dear."_

 _\- The Cross,_ Within Temptation

~0~

For eight hundred years, the only things Moksaka Vajra had known had been warmth, silence, and utter darkness. In that time, try as he might to cling to the memories of them, every sensation he had felt when he had lived freely was all but forgotten. He had long ago resigned himself to his fate: an unchanging eternity sealed inside a prison of skin and flesh with his meister. He would never return to human form again, he would never move on his own again, and no matter how strong their perpetual resonance was or how loudly and pitifully he begged him to through said resonance, Asura would never acknowledge him again. But in spite of how miserable his new life was, he had, however unwittingly, grown used to it over the centuries.

Even when Asura had been revived (how and by who, he was still in the dark about - no pun intended), when the thrills of excitement and happiness in the other's soul were some of the strongest he'd ever felt from his meister, nothing at all had changed for Vajra. While he had discovered that he could hear what was going on outside Asura's body to an extent, that was no relief to him: every noise, no matter how hard he strained to understand it, sounded like he was deep underwater and trying to hear what was going on above the surface. Only the closest and loudest were in any way discernible, and he thought that was just his luck. For so long, he had mourned the loss of all his senses, and now when he finally got one of them back, it was twice as frustrating as before.

Sight, when he realized that he could have that back too, was a little better. Of course, he could only look at things again when Asura needed to push him out of his mouth to use his power, and even then the world was as hazy and confusing as if he were seeing it through smoke. Perhaps his eyes would adjust with time, and let him see everything he had been missing for so long, but that was no concern of Asura's: he would only keep Vajra out for as long as _he_ wanted and not a second longer.

It turned his stomach - or at least brought him as close to that sensation as could be felt in a form that possessed no actual stomach - to know that he was no longer the equal and trusted partner he had been, he who had fought and cried and bled for Asura, he whose skin had been riddled time and time again with scars because he had been determined, happy even, to take all the pain he could that had been meant for his partner. Now he was a mere tool in Asura's eyes, whose only purpose was to be used as a means to an end, and then discarded. (Or swallowed, he supposed, in his case, never to resurface.) Even though he'd spent the majority of his life being used as Asura's weapon - indeed, it had been the sole purpose of his life, ever since Shinigami had taken him away from Arachnophobia and introduced him to his young son - it had never felt at all like this.

Back then, Asura had cared for him, praised him, worried about him. They had been partners, both acknowledging the other as his equal.

All of that, apparently, was forgotten now. Though their souls were still bonded and their resonance strong, though their very bodies were meshed together, the two of them had never been more distant from each other. His meister still did not deign to speak to him: not to comfort him, not to voice his own relief at being free again, not even to command him to up their resonance level. His weapon was of no importance to him now. Vajra wondered bitterly if he even counted as a person anymore.

When Asura had fled Death City upon their release and used Vajra to fend off his father in doing so, even disoriented as he was by the sudden, now unfamiliar feeling of _fresh air_ (such a simple thing, but, oh, how he had missed it!) on his metallic form, the weapon had somehow had the presence of mind to recognize Shinigami's deep voice and dark blurry shape. He had tried to call out to him, to plead for help, to just let him know that he was still there and alive, but try as he might, he couldn't make his voice work again in time to speak before he was sucked back down into the darkness of his meister's body.

"I doubt we'll ever meet again," Asura had said to his father before flying away, as cocky as he always was when he was certain of his own safety.

Vajra hoped that wasn't true. If there was anyone left in the world that could help him (because whoever had wanted to set Asura free clearly hadn't cared to let him out too), it was his old master. Most likely, nothing short of divine intervention could make him human again.

 _Next time. Next time, I'm sure..._

~0~

The world was steadily filling with madness thanks to the Kishin's influence, but Vajra knew that that wouldn't do Asura any good unless the ones capable of reversing the effects and returning the world to normal were gotten rid of. The time his meister took to hide away from Shinigami and put a solid plan together felt to him no different than the time they'd spent in the skin bag. All was still and dark and quiet, and that was just fine to Asura, since he had actually chosen to be in this place. Vajra, on the other hand, felt himself sinking into the sort of stasis he had existed in over the past eight hundred years, until another voice caught his attention, one that sent fury like he had never felt before surging through him. No matter how much time had passed, no matter how impaired his hearing was, he would know that person anywhere.

"Kishin Asura, my name is Arachne. I have come to pay you worship. Will you not show yourself to me?"

To his meister's credit, while the sudden intrusion of a stranger into his place of refuge terrified Asura, he did a decent job of hiding it: his voice barely shook when he demanded that she leave, and fired his skin scarves in her direction in warning. To his own irritation, it appeared to do nothing.

"What an adorable boy, afraid of a lone woman."

 _Asura!_ he cried out. Much as he couldn't forgive his partner for what he'd done to him, Vajra still couldn't stand to hear him mocked. _Asura! Don't waste our time with her! This time you have my permission, even: use me to kill her!_

For once, he was only half ignored. Asura didn't move at all, but Vajra heard the noise of several crashes and a woman's gasps of pain outside. _Yes!_ If he could have, he would have smirked and pumped his fist (he missed his hands and mouth). He'd prefer to be doing this himself - after all, _he_ was the one who'd spent ten years being tortured in this witch's laboratory - but he could settle for Asura punishing her in his place. _Give her what she deserves!_

And for a wonderful, gratifying minute, when he heard harder crashing of wood on flesh, skin stretching, struggles for breath, and finally Asura cackling madly over the sound of splintering bones, he thought that finally something was going his way. Arachne could talk until she was blue in the face about "the flames of hate-filled revenge," but he knew that she couldn't possibly have any idea what it felt like, to hate someone so much and wish death upon them so fervently that it felt as if it would burn you alive. _Asura! Please - let me out! Let me finish it!_

But he should have known better than to get his hopes up. He had thought that Asura was too smart and too suspicious to allow someone to sweet-talk him into doing their bidding. Apparently he had misjudged his partner on that score, too; the ideas of having someone who would help him destroy his father and keep him safe while they did it were more enticing to Asura than he had assumed, and he was having second thoughts about killing the one who had intruded on them after all.

As the now-calm Kishin allowed himself to be led away by the witch and her lieutenants, the anger that flared up again in the weapon's soul was joined by another, equally strong flare of jealousy. _Don't you dare talk about how you'll stay with him! Don't think you can lie to me!_ he internally ranted. _I'm the one who belongs by his side! I'm the one who would protect him with my life, not you!_

Vajra didn't fully realize what he was thinking for a moment, and when he did, the words pulled him up short. _Would I really...do that now? Any of that? If the choice was still mine?_

If he was being honest with himself, he actually didn't know. Would he really have it in him to turn on Asura, as he should? To abandon the only purpose his life had ever had? The person he had loved more deeply than anyone or anything else?

His feelings toward Asura could never be the same as they had been eight hundred years ago; he wasn't so far gone that he couldn't admit that. Resentment and rage at his undeserved imprisonment and at his meister for forcing him into it had long since stained the pure, unthinking love he had once held for Asura. Stained it - but not replaced it. And that was the part that bewildered and unsettled him. Were he ever free of his partner again, he would never be able to stop loving him. Even if he were able to leave Asura, return to Shinigami's side, and never stray from there again (as he knew would be the safest and healthiest course of action), that love would still be there, chaining him to his meister, his jailor. Even as he knew that, he wondered whether he would actually have the strength to force himself to do that.

His chest felt heavy, and he wished he could sigh. Not for the first time, he thought, _What a coward I am. And what a fool, as well._

~0~

It hadn't taken long after his rescue for Shinigami to place him as Asura's personal weapon. There wasn't much time for him to settle into his new role, but that hadn't been much of a problem. He and Asura had taken well to each other from the start, and he was able to serve his purpose of bringing the perpetually frightened child comfort and relief even better than his master had hoped. He did his best to live up to the name the ancient being had gifted him - Moksaka Vajra, "thunderbolt of salvation" - and it had appeared to everyone that he had succeeded.

After years of training and fighting and living together, he had heard it from his partner's own mouth, too: "You are the only friend I have ever had, Vajra. You will always be the one who's closest to me, no matter what my father thinks. Because you are the only thing...that can take even a tiny bit of the fear away."

Once, during any one of the countless nights spent with Asura slipping into bed beside him sometime around midnight, with his head against Vajra's shoulder and the weapon's arms wrapped protectively around him, it wouldn't have been a surprise to hear him murmur something like that, at the time when he was at his most vulnerable. Once, he had let himself believe that he truly was the only one that Asura would say such things to, and, less happily, that he was the only one that could provide the young shinigami with the sense of security that he so desperately needed.

Deep in the heart of Baba Yaga Castle, as if it weren't enough that he was being unwillingly thrust back into the hell of his childhood, he was being proven wrong on yet another naïve assumption.

Waves of contentment radiated from Asura's soul, as he laid in a different bed, across a different person's body (apparently considering his partner of fourteen years as easily replaceable as any mortal weapon), listening to her say all the things that Vajra had said, but with none of the sincerity that he had: "Don't worry. _I'll_ protect you. I'll always be by your side. I'll eradicate everything that makes you feel uneasy. So don't worry..."

The witch's voice was soothing to Asura, but gut-wrenching to his weapon. Hearing the sound of so many of his nightmares again was tearing open scars he had thought were long healed. _As if I don't have enough to deal with,_ he thought, as some of his earliest memories steadily resurfaced.

~0~

 _He is five years old, crouching at the back of a small cage - suited to an animal, perhaps, but certainly not to a young boy. The only sounds in the musty-smelling holding room are the shuffling and whimpering of the other test subjects, all in varying states of health, in their own cages. He's tried a few times to count how many of them there are, but in the dimness it's difficult to tell. And there are too many, anyway, that are without warning dragged away and never brought back, so combined with the ones knocked unconscious and brought in from outside and the ones born right in the labs like he was, their number changes often. He has been lucky in that respect so far: though he despises the cold, fear-tinged tedium of this lowest basement they're kept in, at least he's been able to make it back down here alive after being brought to the upper levels. Multiple times, in fact, not many of them can claim that._

 _And now, it looks as if his luck will be tested yet again._

 _The clang of the heavy metal door being thrown open never fails to make him and most of the room's other inhabitants jump, and the familiar sight of the teenaged girl that strides in makes them cringe back. She's the only happy one in the room: a smirk plays on her lips as her golden eyes survey the room. The middle Gorgon sister always revels in the fear of those under her control, however temporarily. It must be a family trait._

 _"Good morning, all of you!" she greets them. "I'm sure you're excited to find out which one of you gets to help with my sister's experiments today, aren't you?"_

 _The lithe, dark-haired girl beside her, who's recently begun following at Medusa's heels like a dog on a leash for reasons unknown to him, frowns at her companion's words. "Mistress, please, don't draw this out for long. Arachne-sama won't be happy if the one task she gave you takes too long for her liking."_

 _"When I want your input, I'll ask for it, Nephele," Medusa dismisses her, but she still decides to stop taunting them for the moment, and goes silently through the rows of cages to choose which subject would be best suited to whatever experiment Arachne is about to carry out._

 _Nephele narrows her eyes at the young witch's back and, upon seeing that she's no longer being paid any attention, turns and quickly and quietly makes her way through the other half of the room, right to the back corner - right up to him, he realizes with a start. She kneels down in front of his cage and gives him a kind smile. "Hello, there," she whispers, as he gawks through the bars at her, not understanding her intentions. Her eyes - which are a color he can't decide if it's closer to blue or violet - are so gentle, with not a trace of malice in them._

 _"I'm sorry for what happened the last time we were here," she goes on. "You must have been very scared. Here..." She reaches into the pocket of her dress - the soft white a stark contrast to the jet black most people here always wear - and pulls out a tiny but soft-looking roll of bread topped with sugar. "To make up for that."_

 _He's still puzzled by her strange behavior, but it's so rare that they're given anything but the same bland stuff, that is apparently excellent for them in the nutritional sense but can barely be counted as real food, and he starts to reach out to take the offering -_

 _Which vanishes from his reach the second he does. Instinctively, he freezes as Nephele is suddenly knocked to the floor and her place taken by one of the very last people he wants this close to him. "Good job, Nephele, you found my little friend!" Medusa says brightly. "I wonder why they moved you all the way over here - not because of what you almost made me do the last time I saw you, I hope?" Her smile turns vicious, and he cowers back further. "You'll do perfectly for today. Come here."_

 _She opens the cage door, grabs him by the ring of the tight collar around his neck and yanks him out, and it's this that makes him panic and try to pull away. "No, I don't wanna, let me go!"_

 _Instantly, the heel of her left hand collides with his mouth. "No one cares what you want, brat," she snarls. Her right hand tightens on his collar, and twists it just enough to remind him that she could strangle him right here and now, if she wanted to. "And I am not going to deal with you giving me a hard time every time I try to bring you up there, do you understand? Onee-sama wouldn't let me hurt you too badly last time, but if you ever fight me like that again I'll break both your arms in ten different places. Truth be told, I'm angry enough that all she'll allow me to do in the labs is herd you useless things around, so I don't think you want to push me any further."_

 _Hearing nothing but sniffling from him as he tries to hold back tears (he doesn't_ want _to give her the satisfaction of seeing him cry, but between his fear and his throbbing jaw he can't stop), she turns to give Nephele, who is picking herself up from the floor and rubbing her scraped forearm, a cruel smile. "You see what your pure heart gets you and everyone around you, my little angel? I told you it would be a bad idea to keep it."_

" _Let's not waste any more time," Nephele says through clenched teeth. She won't look at him, only at the face of her mistress. "Arachne-sama is waiting for us."_

" _For_ this, _you mean," Medusa says, tugging on his collar. "Let's go."_

 _Much as he wants to, he's too afraid of punishment to try and get away from the girls as they take him upstairs, and not five minutes later, he's lying on a cold steel operating table, sharp chemical smells burning his nose, unable to move as he stares up at the one person who scares him more than Medusa does._

" _We'll need to decrease the normal dosage for one this size and age," Arachne muses, as she regards the child below her, trembling in the tight leather straps holding him down, as if he were nothing more than a rat. Silhouetted against the cold light of the huge lamps above them, she looks like a being of pure darkness. "Make it half for him," she orders one of her assistants, who immediately darts off to get the required substance._

" _And don't mess it up," Medusa snaps after him - or her, with the masks he can never tell. He can't see her, but she's always right beside the table, watching her sister at her work (and forcing a far less excited Nephele to do the same; he hopes this won't be bad enough to make the kind girl cry like the other times). "We've had enough failures, haven't we, onee-sama?"_

 _She clearly expects the older witch to join in in mocking their lackeys, but Arachne just looks annoyed at the reminder of her many failed experiments. She is distracted from rebuking the girl, however, as her attention is turned back to the assistant that's returned with a small vial of the requested material. She takes the vial from him in one hand and picks up a hypodermic needle from a tray beside her with the other hand._

" _Now, there's nothing to be afraid of, little one," she croons to him, sugary sweet, as she fills the syringe with luminous purple liquid that he can't identify, which only scares him more. Normally he can get an idea of what is about to happen from the color of the substance he's going to have injected into him, or be submerged in, or be forced to swallow: red to make his heart pound so hard it hurts, yellow to make him sweat and vomit, blue to make his head feel like it's about to split open. But now, he has no way of guessing what she's going to do to him. "Just one quick injection; this won't hurt one bit."_

 _Behind her, Medusa laughs lightly at her sister's lie - he knows by now that she loves to hear the subjects screaming in pain whether the procedures work or not. However, Arachne doesn't share her sadistic enthusiasm. Neither her expression nor her tone change as she asks, "Medusa, do you want to be next on this table?"_

" _N-No, onee-sama, I don't," she says quickly, too startled to fully keep the tremor from her voice. He's seen this happen enough times to know how she looks, too: all of a sudden wide-eyed and tense, wary of the sister that holds sway over her life, that she knows is stronger than her. Part of him wishes he could see what Arachne can do that will unfailingly make even someone like Medusa serve at her whim, but the rest of him is too terrified at the prospect to even imagine it._

" _I didn't think so. I let you down here because I think even you can learn something from silent observation. If you can't do what I tell you to, then you might be helping with my experiments in a much different way than you want. Do you understand?"_

" _Yes, onee-sama. Forgive me."_

" _Good girl. Now..." She looks back down at him, readying the syringe. The needle glints in the cold light - it's got to be as long as his hand - and her eyes begin to shine bright blue. "You've been worked so hard up until now...Are you ready to become my newest weapon, little one?"_

 _Before he has any time to respond, the needle is stabbing a vein in his neck, and something hot as molten metal pours into his veins as she pushes the plunger down. Immediately, he starts to panic as the heat builds and builds, turning his blood to fire and searing him alive from the inside. Screams of agony rip from his throat, long and shrill, and he struggles to get off the table - it probably wouldn't do any good to run, the damage is done, but he just wants to get_ away _from all these people - but he's strapped down too tightly. It feels as if he's burning alive but at the same time being melted down: his body is twisting, stretching, contorting, like clay being pulled into a new shape. Tears leak from the corners of his eyes and he's breathing too hard and too fast as he wonders wildly what the hell he's going to end up as if he manages to survive._

 _The witch standing over him, however, is perfectly serene. Though his vision is quickly blurring, he can still make out a faint smile playing on her lips as she watches him thrash and shriek. "Yes...excellent. Not much longer now, little one. Soon you'll be perfect."_

~0~

He's abruptly jolted out of his memories by a small whimper from Asura, and a simultaneous ripple in their wavelength, that puts him instantly on alert.

Arachne apparently heard it too; genuine or not, she sounded worried. "Asura? What's wrong?"

"...He's upset," Asura murmured.

"Who is?"

"Vajra. He's upset, and angry. I can feel it when he is...but he's not usually this bad."

Now she was confused too. "Who is Vajra?"

"My weapon. The one I swallowed."

"You mean - !" A sharp intake of breath. "You mean he's still alive, inside you?"

"Yes. Right now his emotions are strong enough that it's affecting our resonance, and it's making my stomach too hot. I wish he'd calm down, but I know he won't."

"Is that so?" ( _Didn't take her long to get used to that little revelation, did it?_ Vajra thought wryly.) "Well, what's the matter with him?"

"I think...I think it's because he can hear you. When he was a child, he was one of your test subjects, the ones you made into weapons. He knows where we are and he doesn't want to be here. And he doesn't like to hear you talking to me...He really hates you, you know."

She actually has the nerve to _laugh_ at that. "Does he, now? That sounds rather petty of him. I gave him a weapon's power, and for all he knows, my experiments could be the reason he's managed to survive up until now. He ought to be grateful to me."

His thoughts scream louder than his voice ever could: _Grateful?! To_ you?! _Fuck that!_

Asura makes another noise of discomfort, louder this time. "It seems like he's just the opposite. I wish he'd cool down, I don't much like it when he gets emotional like this."

"I can understand that. Tools like him can never accept it gracefully when they become obsolete. After all this time, you'd think he would learn."

"...Can we stop talking about him now? He's _burning_ now with his anger."

"Is he? Remind me to look into that when we're finished with Shibusen. I'm certain that my researchers can find a way to make him stop bothering you like that, while letting you keep on using his powers."

Asura was silent, while Vajra bristled even more. _Just try it, you bitch,_ he wanted to snarl. _Just you try and replace me. You'll see. I'll be free one day, and I'll kill you myself then. I'll make you suffer like you made me suffer! One day...One day..._

~0~

It didn't play out quite as he had envisioned. But that day, as it happened, came far sooner than Vajra had expected.

He had felt the sudden turmoil in Asura's wavelength, which was effectively doubling his own. He _still_ hadn't been able to make his voice work enough to get so much as a word out to Shinigami, and he was currently in a state of utter panic after being forced to fire one of his most powerful lasers directly onto the meisters and weapons who watched, not strong enough to join in the fight - which included, he had been horrified to realize, that one small boy who reminded him very much of a young Asura. Shinigami had taken the full force of it in their place, just as Asura had planned, and Vajra couldn't decide which target would have been worse to hit.

 _Hell, how do I know it's not both?!_ he thought wildly, his heart twisting as he listened to the shinigami boy's increasingly desperate calls for his father. _The blast was big enough, it could have caught the others too even if Shinigami caught the brunt of it. Shit! As if it wasn't enough that the last person alive who could have helped me out of here might be dead, now he's trying to make me blow up the bystanders too?!_

Now his meister was confusing the hell out of him on top of that: the emotions pulsing from his soul were a mixture of sincere affection and stark terror, and his thoughts an indecipherable mess. While Asura very suddenly flew away from the Death Room at breakneck speed, Vajra racked his brain trying to figure out what could be wrong now.

What did Asura mean, he needed to repair himself? He had managed to not only come out on top, but do it without a scratch on him. And hadn't he just been gloating about his victory a moment ago? If he hadn't managed to kill his father with that attack, then he'd handily taken him out of the fight, meaning that there was no one left on his level willing to take him on. Not that Vajra wanted it to happen, but Asura could destroy Shibusen and all Shinigami's troops easily now, so why in the world was he running instead?

"Asura...I knew you would come back to me! I was worried this whole time."

More specifically, why was he running to _her?_ He would grit his teeth so hard if he could. _Now there's one person I wouldn't mind blowing to pieces. But of course Asura wouldn't think to -_

"This whole time...?"

 _Wait. Wait a minute._

"Yes."

"Arachne..."

 _Asura, this feeling in your wavelength..._

"...I'm afraid."

 _This sort of fear...This is..._

"Don't worry. I'll - "

"I'm afraid of _you."_

For the first time in his life, he was _thrilled_ that his partner was so afraid, because he realized exactly what was going to come of it the instant before it happened. He could hear the crack of bone, the tearing of flesh, the strangled sound the witch made, how she tried one last time to say Asura's name as he plunged his hand into her chest and tore the pulsing soul right out of her. He had hunted and killed enough witches himself to know that right now her body lay destroyed at the Kishin's feet. His voice of reason pointed out that it hadn't been done to satisfy his bloodlust, and in fact prevented him from taking his own vengeance, but it was quickly drowned out by a rush of savage pleasure and gratification. Finally, _finally,_ his old tormentor was dead, and she would never hurt anyone else, ever again.

 _I bet it hurt. I_ hope _it hurt. It's exactly what she deserved,_ he thought gleefully. He no longer had a physical mouth that could grin, nor a heart that could pound, but the sensations he felt now were fairly close. _And it was all her own fault, too._ _If she had kept her hands off of Asura, this never would have happened!_

But his internal celebration was short-lived. Asura swallowed the newly caught soul down, and its power immediately rocked both their wavelengths. He couldn't see anything, but he could feel the body he was trapped in changing, could hear Asura howling in pain as his muscles stretched and enlarged far too quickly, and he realized that he had never given any thought to what a witch's soul could do to a Kishin. _So,_ he thought as a chill of fear washed over him, _what's going to happen to us now?_

~0~

Chaos. Everything was chaos.

There was noise all around them, screams and explosions and Asura's gloating laughter. All he could see when he was briefly shoved out were blurs of people dashing _(are those kids oh Death have mercy they are they're just kids he's going to make me kill them he's going to kill them all oh Death no no no)_ around on a background of hazy grey and red, and it seemed that there were less of them moving each time he got a look. But even if he hadn't had any of his senses, he would still have been able to tell that things weren't going well for Shibusen's soldiers from the elation and triumph pulsing in Asura's wavelength. A sick feeling gnawed at him. He didn't want to think the word _hopeless,_ but that's how the situation was starting to look.

It occurred to him that he had been, however unconsciously, holding out hope for Shibusen to defeat Asura and eradicate his madness, and that he has no idea what will become of the world should they fail. _Madness is enough for this world,_ Asura had said. In other words, his meister was perfectly content to let the world and all its people eventually destroy themselves under his influence if it meant he could live out the rest of his existence in comfort, pretending that madness had erased all of his fear. And as for Vajra...

His recurring fantasy that someday Asura would have a change of heart and finally release him as a reward for his love and loyalty was an impossible one. He would never even consider the idea, and Vajra would be left to rot inside his body for eternity. He had to wonder, though...what would happen to him on the off chance that his partner were to be killed? Would he be destroyed along with the body? He was somewhat surprised but not at all disturbed at his complete absence of fear at the thought. Surely, oblivion would be better than even another minute of this torture, if he were left with no other choice but to fall into it...But he still clung to the slimmest hope that rescue was still a possibility for him, even though it was the most damaging and foolish thing he could be doing to himself.

 _Foolish,_ he wearily reminded himself again, as the last of the children left standing is finally slammed to the ground with a crash that made him flinch. The scythe-girl...She had fought so hard, truly believing that she would win against the Kishin. _Hopeless._

"Caught you." Even when her blades sliced his skin open, Asura was unfazed. There was neither bloodlust nor anger in his wavelength; Vajra only felt the soft buzz of interest and anticipation. "I do not feel pain or fear. But...what about you?"

He realized what his partner intended to do a moment before he heard again the sound of his strong fingers slowly tearing through flesh and bone, but this time instead of feeling pleasure he just felt sicker and sicker as the girl woke, felt the pain and immediately started screaming, long shrill screams of pure agony. She's nothing but a mouse trapped in the claws of a particularly sadistic cat. _Asura...Please, stop this, leave her alone, you've already won..._

"Fighting while asleep is too dishonest. Yes...That's more like it."

 _ASURA! If you're going to kill her, then kill her! But don't draw it out like this; she's not your fucking toy!_

"That emotion you're feeling now is true fear. It's okay. It's time to give in. Surrender yourself to the madness too. It'll free you from the fear. All of the pain and anxiety will go away. "

 _Tch...So that's your game, huh? You and I both know the madness didn't take away your fear, it just helped you cover it up. You're still just a coward at heart!_ He wished he could yell all of that to this girl, tell her not to listen, that she could still fight...But even if he could, the words would be empty. It was just as Asura was saying. What could she possibly do against an overpowered monster like him? Her weapon must be as good as dead; what did she have left?

 _Poor thing,_ he thinks mournfully. He knows the pain of failing your loved ones all too well, has been mired in it for the past eight hundred years. He wouldn't wish that on anybody, least of all a brave girl like this. _The things you must be feeling now, scythe-girl...the last things you'll ever feel -_

"I feel relieved..."

The startled jump in Asura's wavelength came in time with his own. For a moment he thought he must have misheard, but he'd gotten quite good at discerning all the muffled voices around him by now, so it couldn't be that. _Relieved? Why?!_

"Wh-What did you just say?" Asura asked shakily, and then let out a yelp - what was she doing, Vajra wondered?

"I said I feel relieved, that's all," the girl said, her voice clear and strong and _fearless_ enough to make Asura shove her away from him in fright. But for once, despite the turmoil it was causing in his wavelength, his partner's ensuing panic was not at the forefront of Vajra's mind. Instead, he was listening as intently as he could to hear the girl talking over it. She talked as if she was in complete control of the situation now, and he could almost see the confident little smirk on her face. In the next moment, when he heard the encouragement of the other meisters and weapons - so they had managed to survive after all - he wished he could wear the same expression. _I should have known not to count out Shinigami-sama's soldiers that fast. The courage to fight fear...Of course he would teach them that._

Asura did not share in his weapon's relief at all. "Courage, you're saying?"

 _You're muttering to yourself, partner. Not a good sign._

"What's with these people?"

 _Or are you asking me, for once?_

"Why do they try to rely on something so uncertain?"

 _If you are, then I have the answer to that._

"Stop! Don't look at me like that! How can you give that look in a situation like this?"

 _They're not like you. They're_ nothing _like you._

"What's going on?! Just who are you?!"

"My name is Maka Albarn. I'm a scythe meister."

 _Maka._ So that was the name of the girl who was setting off a storm of terror and confusion in Asura's wavelength like he had never felt before. He knew that it was possible that this could have explosive results - it was how he had lost the battle that had ended in him being _eaten,_ after all - but there was something about this meister that made him sure it would be safe to place all his faith in her.

He hadn't been paying enough attention to Asura to expect it when he was shoved out of his mouth again to launch another attack, and was momentarily frightened himself at the thought of being forced to shoot at this girl again, when she said something that made Asura freeze, his weapon still halfway out. "Huh? What did you say?"

He was held at an awkward angle, so he had to strain to do it, but now that he was still Vajra could get a good look at her, blurry as his sight still was: she was shorter than he had pictured her, with ash-blonde hair and a black longcoat (that looked none the worse for wear despite the battle its wearer was just fighting) and green eyes that _burned_ with determination. "I don't know," she answered, clutching something in one gloved hand. "Maybe it's a magic charm. Whatever the case, it has nothing to do with you."

"It bothers _me,_ though!" Asura cried out petulantly. The revulsion in his wavelength was growing so strong that it was making Vajra start to feel a little sick. "Why would you do that?! It disgusts me! I'm about to retch...Stop it!"

"No. I won't. If I stop now, I'll never be able to face the people who supported me and fought alongside me. It was because of them that I'm here now. They gave me their courage - now I just need to add my own courage to it."

 _I think she knows that you could never understand any of that, either, Asura,_ he couldn't resist saying. _She knows that you're the weaker one here._

He wondered if it was the combination of both his weapon and his enemy talking down to him at once that made the fear in Asura's wavelength spike so sharply. "'Add courage?!' Just what are you trying to do?!"

"I'm going to put it all into this fist!"

 _...She's serious about that. She is_ dead _serious. But that can't be it, at least not all of it!_ What kind of move could she really be planning? Maka seemed like a smart girl; she had to know that a simple melee attack wouldn't put a scratch on a Kishin. She had to have something more complex in mind.

Asura was currently taking his partner's slight puzzlement to the extreme with another screaming fit, his voice distorted by the weapon still in his mouth (who was fairly irritated by all the noise that was now not muffled at all). "That's stupid! What can you possibly do with such scrawny arms?! Nothing, that's what! It won't matter one bit anyway! It won't do anything at all! I don't understand you one bit!"

For a moment, without his thinking about it, Vajra's instinct as a weapon (as a _protector)_ took over: _Asura, you idiot! If you don't shut up and get a hold of yourself she's going to kill you!_

What his partner did next were the last two things he had ever expected him to do: First, for the first time in centuries, it seemed as if Asura _responded_ to him, his thoughts, his words, and his movement all stopping short. "I don't understand..." he said again, slowly, contemplatively.

And then, Asura's jaw fell open, and he dropped Vajra out of his mouth.

He clattered to the ground in absolute shock, unable to comprehend at first what had just happened to the point that his mind went temporarily blank. He was aware of Asura's howling, but it was mere background noise at the moment. _Did he really just do that? Is this real? Did he really just_ do _that? Asura...Asura, you -_

All of a sudden, the ground _broke_ under him - from whose attack, he had no idea - and sent him tumbling down the broken slabs of stone until he landed at the base of the pile. Mostly, he was completely dazed, but part of him had the clarity to be thankful that being dropped so roughly hurt slightly less in weapon form than in human form. _Human form..._ Vajra tried to focus as hard as he could on that thought. Now that he could transform back without fear, it was only a matter of remembering _how._

 _Focus...It used to be so easy...Remember how you used to look...How you used to be..._

It took a good few moments, that felt more like hours, but eventually he was able to achieve what had once taken him half a second. The cold air and hard concrete on his skin (such frail skin that hadn't felt a thing in so _long)_ , the sharp, fiery scent on the air, the din of battle in the distance - all of it was overwhelming to his sensation-starved body. His vision was even blurrier now, through human eyes. Lying on his back, all he could see was a haze of red above him. _Wait - not red anymore!_

Before his eyes, the swirling red dissipated, returning to a cool and refreshing shade of blue. _The sky...Not a cloud in the sky, now..._ He tried to raise his hand up to it, but could only manage a twitch. _It's good to see it again anyhow._

Though the brightness of the sun was making his eyes ache, he didn't close them. After eight centuries buried in pitch darkness, this light was the most amazing thing Vajra had ever seen. _Freedom...Is this...Yes. Finally, this is my freedom._

~0~

 **A/N - This originally started as a small piece for Angst Week, but like pretty much everything else I write, it ended up getting away from me and growing** _ **way too fucking big,**_ **so I'm going to split it in two. If** _ **Field of Innocence**_ **didn't teach me to constrain myself, hopefully this will. :)**

 **The dialogue taken from the anime belongs to Atsushi Ohkubo, and I take no credit.**

 **~0~**


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